Welcome to the happiness podcast. I'm Dr. Robert Puff.

When I was younger and trying to decide what I wanted to do with my life, one of the things that

I seriously explored was astrophysics.

Actually, after I finished my PhD, I applied to a program that specialized in

astrophysics and I was going to go on and get my second PhD in that field.

So you can imagine I learned a lot about it along the way, even though I didn't end up doing that for my career.

So over the years I've studied a lot of astronomy.

Well, one thing that I learned was a lot of the early discoveries about astronomy and the universe happened

here in Southern California because early along we had the two largest telescopes in the world.

One was on Mount Wilson Observatory and the second one was on Palomar Mountain, both in Southern

California. Well, because they're close by, I of course visited both of these observatories

several times. And so many wonderful discoveries came out of them, like

the expanding universe that was discovered here in Southern California and the man who was

responsible for building these two telescopes and truly changing the way we see our place in the universe was George Ellery Hell.

I mean he had so many accomplishments to his name that I imagined he be one of the most secure

self-confident astronomers if not persons in the world.

So I was both very puzzled and surprised to learn that he struggled with severe depression.

And with all his accomplishments, he had a lot of self-doubt about whether he was making any difference

at all.

And though he wasn't the first person that I learned about

who had all these accomplishments,

but also had self-doubt and was insecure about who he was as a person,

...